Tuesday, June 9, 2015

The Tanmen people call their navigation log of the South China Sea “Genglubu”,which means the “Road Book”.There are numerous versions of the Genglubu, and it contains centuries of hard-won experience. Every island and its surrounding conditions are clearly described.Chinese experts believe the navigation logs are clear evidence that Chinese fishermen were the first explorers in the South China Sea.The people of Tanmen have been fishing in the South China Sea for generations.Tanmen is a very small fishing town, which has become well known as its residents work on China ‘s maritime frontier.(CCTV America)

One of the challenges for the Chinese government is the growing tensions in the South China Sea. China has proposed resolution through dialogue to its neighbors, but territorial disputes continue to arise.Today’s fishermen not only face the perils of the open sea, but also the danger of an encounter with a foreign patrol boat.

Little boats with noisy engines puttered purposefully down the river
and out toward the South China Sea.
Big vessels — ships, really, with
three or four decks, and heavy equipment — lay tied up close to the
crowded town, looming over the low buildings along the bank.
Then a
workhorse of the sea — high-bowed, about 40 feet long, wheelhouse astern
— slipped by.
It was heading out for a week, or more likely a couple of
weeks, on the open water.
Crewmen, stripped to the waist, lathered up
and washed from a barrel of water on deck as their trip began.
The boat
cleared the last bulkhead and then let loose with dozens of firecrackers
that hung in strings over the sides.

We had arrived by bus:
fifteen reporters from a dozen countries, on a tour arranged by the
East-West Center of Hawaii.
We were in Tanmen, on the island of Hainan,
at the northern approaches to the South China Sea, to talk with
fishermen. We were not going from boat to boat looking for someone with
tales to tell.
Our local escorts had arranged a meeting on the paved
walkway along the south bank of the river.
A delegation of retired
fishermen was there to receive us and tell us about their livelihoods.

China
and its neighbors are quarreling over the South China Sea, and
fishermen play a role in that. Chinese coast guard boats have been driving Philippine and Vietnamese fishing boats away from reefs and fishing grounds that China now claims control of.
We were here to get the Chinese water-level perspective.
Su
Cheng Feng is 80, retired now for 11 years.
At first, after the
firecracker display died down, he was the most talkative.
He said he
didn't meet fishermen from other countries very often in the old days
when he was out at sea, before the surrounding countries' territorial
claims began to be taken seriously, because their boats were smaller
than the Chinese boats, and, frankly, their skills weren't as high.
The
sea, he said, was China's traditional fishing ground.
Chinese
"fishermen have been fishing in the South China Sea for many, many
generations," he said.
"These are our own waters, just as natural as a
farmer going to his field."

We asked him about the past.
What was it like before the Communists came
to power in 1949, or even during the war, when he was a boy and his
father was a fisherman?
He didn't have much to say; nothing special,
nobody talked about it.

Wu Shujin, 79, Mai Yunxiu, 79, and Huang Qinghe, 82, listened in,
added a word here and there. They had all been captains.
They had fished
for wrasse, grouper and mackerel.
They dried their catch on board or
sold it to a buyer's boat that would take it back to shore.
They didn't
get much help from the government
(Younger men standing nearby disputed
that.)

Then Lu Yuyong suddenly appeared.
He's 51, still active
on a boat.
He took over the conversation.
"The life on a boat is very
tough," he said.

Lu Yuyong, 51, looks up from a chart of the South China Sea on which he has placed a traditional Chinese compass. (Will Englund/The Washington Post)

He brought out a pink plastic bag and unwrapped
from it a traditional Chinese compass.
It's one of the four great
Chinese inventions, he said (along with gunpowder, paper-making and
printing).
Suddenly he was on his knees on the blacktop, unrolling a
nautical chart of the sea.
He was showing us how to use the compass on
the chart, and having a little trouble, most likely because it had
traditional markings on it and not the 360 degrees of a modern one.
Su
got down with him, and all the reporters and local hangers-on crowded
around.
Lu said he was glad the Chinese government is building up
some of the islands in the sea; he has lost three family members in
storms who had nowhere to go to and no one to help them.
Permanent
occupation on some of the islands could save lives, he said.
But when fishermen from other countries dare to fish the South China Sea, he said, "they're invading our waters."
"We
could go all the way to Australia if we wanted to," he said.
"But we
don't. That's not our ground. It's not about loving or not loving your
country. It's about fishing your own waters."

Chinese fisherman,
he said, were the first to discover the islands of the South China Sea.
"And as opposed to other countries, we are civilized," he said, again
mentioning the compass as one of the four great inventions.
He rolled up
the chart, then got out a piece of paper and drew his own map of the
sea, which he labeled the "Ancestor Sea."
He talked about the annual
celebrations in Tanmen for the Brotherhood of the 108 (also known as the
108 Stars of Destiny, or the Outlaws of the Marsh), demonic overlords
from a 700-year-old novel who were banished, repented and were reborn as
heroes.
What upstart nation, he seemed to be asking, could lay claim to
history here the way China can?